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Tina Bursill is an actor best known for playing Meryl Knight in Doctor Doctor. The 70-year-old The actor talks about her relationship with her father, working with Barry Humphries, and how at 70, she’s undergoing a renaissance.
“I have never been married, in the biblical sense, but I’ve had solid, committed relationships and I’ve loved every one of them.” Credit:Alina Gozin’a
I used to stay with my paternal grandfather, Pop, a builder, in Forster [on the NSW Mid North Coast] during the school holidays. He took me fishing, which I continue to do. We’d go out in a putt-putt with sandwiches, a Thermos and a fishing line and cork. I loved every part of it, as well as the art of silence.
My father, Keith, loved horses. In his youth he wanted to join the Light Horsemen, but his mother forbade it, so he ended up at 15 on Cockatoo Island [in Sydney Harbour] as an apprentice marine engineer.
I was a baby when Dad joined the merchant marines. He travelled for about 14 years, and my mum, Aileen, used to take me to see him at Newcastle when he docked. Dad would come home sporting a beard. I used to suck my thumb, but the hair on my father’s face often replaced it.
Dad always believed I needed to maintain my independence and be resourceful, so when I was a teenager he gave me a red toolbox – I still have it. I’d be under the car helping with oil changes, and then changing tyres.
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Dad was diagnosed with asbestosis in the 1980s, as he was in contact with it on Cockatoo Island. When we were contemplating some sort of compensation, through his papers, I discovered he was a hero. He’d been working as an engineer at Tooth brewery in 1971 when an explosion occurred. A man had been blown backwards. Dad held onto this man’s head and stayed with him until he died. He had never spoken about this.
Dad had a stroke in the late 1990s and then a mini-stroke in 2015, so I moved in with him for the last year of his life. People were always visiting, eating, and enjoying wine and music. It was a wonderful time. I felt loved and I loved feeling loved. Friends said he was a beautiful, kind man, but it took me a lifetime to find that out. I loved him my father very deeply.
I met my first boyfriend when I was 15. He lived in our block and used to study with his four university friends in the backyard. We went out for several years, and I lost my virginity to him. In those times, that implied our relationship was serious and would lead to marriage and babies, but that was not to be. He was my first heartbreak.